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By TIM REYNOLDS, AP Sports activities Author
One other check occasion for the 2022 Beijing Olympics was known as off Saturday, when bobsled and skeleton officers canceled plans to have a coaching week and World Cup race on a newly constructed monitor to finish this 12 months’s sliding season.
The choice comes simply days after luge officers additionally canceled that sport’s season-ending World Cup and coaching week on the monitor inbuilt Yanqing.
The explanation, in each instances, was the identical: ongoing considerations about worldwide journey throughout the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in China a few 12 months in the past.
In a letter despatched to nationwide federations Saturday, Worldwide Bobsled and Skeleton Federation secretary normal Heike Groesswang stated a number of weeks of conversations had been held about tips on how to transfer ahead with the coaching week and World Cup “beneath the difficult circumstances the COVID-19 pandemic causes to all of us.”
The brand new schedule requires a bobsled coaching week in early October and a skeleton coaching week later in October. Meaning many countries will doubtless have to decide on some semblance of their 2021-22 nationwide groups by the top of this season, since many of the world’s tracks will not be iced and working earlier than these coaching weeks in China are held.
“A alternative for the World Cup in March 2021 can be introduced subsequent week,” Groesswang stated.
USA Bobsled and Skeleton and USA Luge are sitting out the pre-Christmas parts of the World Cup schedules in these sports activities, as are a number of different nations, due to considerations about worldwide journey and different pandemic-related points.
In a ladies’s World Cup bobsled race in Latvia on Saturday, solely six sleds completed the 2 runs. That was believed to be the smallest World Cup discipline since ladies started competing on the circuit.
It’s been custom for at the least the final 5 Olympic cycles for a World Cup occasion to be held on that monitor that can host the video games the next winter, and people races have been vital by way of groups accumulating information and formulating an Olympic technique.
However not having the coaching weeks and World Cups in China may elevate the potential of some nations, the U.S. included, not competing internationally in any respect this season.
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